


Ritual

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Force Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, MayThe4th Treat, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-27 20:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10815942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Two funerals Leia attended.





	Ritual

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sweven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sweven/gifts).



When Leia was four years old, Mother called her into her room and helped her don a small black dress of purest chersilk. Mother's face looked strange, with puffy red blotches. Cousin Latta had died, she explained, as she pulled the hairbrush through Leia's long tresses. Leia barely remembered Latta, but she was sad because Mother was sad.

"We were little girls together," Mother said, pinning up Leia's hair in long loops instead of her fine braids. "She was like my sister back then."

At the funeral, Mother and Father stood solemnly in the front, Leia obediently beside them. She paid attention to the faces of the other mourners, feeling as though their sorrow touched her like soft, dark wings. The funeral was about memories, they said. Leia had few memories of Latta, but Mother had more than enough to share. Father held Mother's hand as they approached the open coffin, and Mother spoke gentle words of parting to the woman there. Others said she looked asleep. Leia knew sleeping people looked very different.

As they moved away, Leia spotted a blue shadow sitting on the stairs close by. No one else saw Latta, or perhaps they did and were too polite to say so. She noticed Leia's curious smile, and returned one of her own. Everyone else was sad, but Latta looked happy. She stood, and she placed her hand on Mother's arm before she turned away.

"Bye, Latta," said Leia. Father placed a warm hand on her head, but his eyes didn't follow the ghost as she walked out the door and was gone.

* * *

Leia had left several formal outfits here on Yavin 4 the last time she'd come. Father had advised her to do so, and thus never have to explain her delays in arrivals and departures elsewhere in the same gowns. Today she selected the darkest plum she owned, the closest to black she still possessed, and she sat at the borrowed mirror and let out her hair.

She remembered Mother's quick fingers unraveling braids, and she remembered her strong smiles above her on the grand mirror where she would help Leia pin up her hair. She remembered the crinkle in Father's eyes as the two of them stepped out from their dressing room, a Queen and a Princess in full royal form. She'd learned, almost too late, that while he appreciated the efforts they expended, he didn't care if his wife and daughter emerged with elaborate braids and brocade, or if they'd cut their hair off and dressed in rude hypercloth. His joy was in seeing them.

The mirror in front of her was repurposed from another place. She could see the chips in the edge where it had been hacked out of a frame, stolen or salvaged. The face looking back at her had held strong through her capture, through her torture, and had not sobbed when Tarkin had unleashed his weapon. The full weight of what had happened had only begun to settle in on her shoulders.

A planet was too large to mourn at once. Leia would start with her parents.

She placed her hair into loops. Outside her quarters, her new friends waited for her. She couldn't explain why, but she felt more comfortable doing this with the two men she'd just met than with the other rebels she'd known for years. She ought to share memories of her parents with the others who known them. Instead, she let Han lead them into his ship, where the three of them sat together drinking his cheap liquor while Leia told them the best memories she had of Mother and Father, and she listened when Luke told them about the kind people who'd raised him, and about the best friend who'd died yesterday. She felt the echoes of his grief in his words, perhaps because she had her own to bear. It made her burden lighter.

Han's liquor was terrible, burning all the way down. Leia's palate was far more used to the light wines she tasted during court. Enough stories and enough drink, and she felt herself falling asleep. A proper lady would get herself back to her quarters. Instead, she closed her eyes against Luke's shoulder, and didn't wake again until she felt Han tucking in a blanket over them both. He budged in on Luke's other side, reaching over to rest his hand on Leia's shoulder, fingers touching one loop of her hair as he started to snore.

She watched him, watched them. Her heart was sad, but she'd never felt safer in her whole life.


End file.
